Big Island telescope studies emerging star
By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Big Island Bureau
HILO, Hawai'i — An amateur astronomer in Kentucky who in January spotted a "smudge of light" in a curious location in the night sky has helped scientists on Mauna Kea capture new images of the birth of a star about 1,500 light-years away.
Using the Frederick C. Gillett Gemini North Telescope, astronomers in Hawai'i watched powerful stellar winds blasting gas and dust away from a newborn star at speeds of more than 370 miles per second.
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"It is extremely rare that we have an opportunity to study an important event like this, where a newly born star erupts and sheds light on its otherwise dark stellar nursery," said Gemini astronomer Colin Aspin.
Amateur astronomer Jay McNeil noticed the unusual events in the constellation of Orion while taking electronic images through his 3-inch telescope from his back yard in rural Kentucky. He saw a new, glowing smudge of light in a part of the sky he knew well, and alerted scientists.
What he found — now known as McNeil's Nebula — was a period in the birth of a star that scientists had never had the opportunity to observe before with modern instruments. The birth of a star takes tens of thousands of years.
"We have seen a few eruptions like that — the last one was in 1969 — but of course at that time it was very limited what astronomers could do," said Bo Reipurth of the University of Hawai'i's Institute for Astronomy.
"What I think is the nice thing is you have an amateur astronomer with a 3-inch telescope making a discovery that will have the biggest telescopes on Earth pointing in that direction," Reipurth said. "It is thanks to his vigilance and his dedication to getting things right that we are able to do this now."
By comparison, the Gemini telescope is 26.5 feet in diameter.
Reipurth and Aspin published the first paper on the object, which as an infrared source is known as IRAS 05436—0007.
The eruption was triggered by complex interactions in a rotating disk of gas and dust around the star. For reasons that are not fully understood, the inner part of the disk began to heat up, causing the gases to glow.
The process also caused the star to grow, as glowing gas from the inner edge of the disk fell to the surface of the star, creating very bright hot spots.
This outburst may not be the first time the star has flared. A check of archived images showed a similar event took place in 1966, when the star flared and faded again.
Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 935-3916.
